The Catcher in the Rye

The brilliant, funny, meaningful novel that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature. The hero-narrator is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days, grappling with feelings of loneliness, grief, and alienation. His search for something genuine in a world that feels insincere and superficial remains urgent and unmistakably modern.